


First Contact

by theapplekeeper (Deunan)



Series: Writerverse [14]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Gen, Language Barrier, Solas will need to rethink his hobo!persona, Soldiers, a battlemage who would not submit, fade memories, side character death(s), which does not go well for the Templars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-19 19:43:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3621933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deunan/pseuds/theapplekeeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solas is walking through Fade memories for the truth behind the slaughter at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. The one that happened <i>after </i> it exploded. </p><p>Or: In which the Inquisition mightn't ever form because what came through the rift is a Bosmer Dovahkiin who would not be shackled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Contact

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ comm Writerverse and their Challenge #01: Weekly Quick Fic #1 (word prompt: treacherous).

He had watched this army, armed and aided by Templars’ fury, fall to her words and her will. He had watched as lighting blanketed soldiers and incinerated them, as fire spread from body to body, as gale-force pushed and twisted bodies to fatality, watched as sword and arrow cut down all the rest. Seventy-four humans, soldier and scout alike, murdered in minutes.

He had also seen them converge on her, she who had tumbled from the breach unarmed and unadorned, with swords drawn and voices angry- her guilt already ascribed. She had been so very small, in those moments of unknowing, prone and breathing as one who had been with no air. A figure discarded, vulnerable. Easy to subdue, easy to blame, easy to kill.

This impression had not lasted long.

The man who had lead the army advanced upon her, sword drawn with barely leashed vitriol.

She had risen in the burnt ruin of a once great fortress with deft quickness, a frown to lips and eyes keen. They took in everything, archers in position along high walls to soldiers’ formation a wide half-ring several paces before her. Dismissed the gathering as unimportant in favor of her hand, the green spell-light on palm; when it crackled like the breach above her, she had drawn back a step like a weary startled thing. Behind her a pillar, and it is to this she had moved closer to. Strategic positioning Solas might have thought coincidence had the battle’s outcome been any different.

“Nage hit.” She had said, in no language he has heard or learned in dreamwalking, and turned towards the humans. “Le jah iero vashindin pin. Uo-halla deet fits mova-eh. Letah. Letah.” The words had been fast, sharp. Left hand slashed though air palm down. She said again “lee- _tah_ ,” voice low in tone and careful emphases but loud enough to travel to the archers.

It stopped the Commander, but not for long. “You are under arrest” the human had said, firm and absolute.

A human woman followed at his side, Seeker the armor proclaimed, hand on sword several inches free from scabbard already- an easy tell of action pending. “You will speak Common, Elf. Do not think we can be fooled.”

“Ne-haan bowdin day.” She had given back, left hand palm towards the humans. She held it there and said: “Uo-estwin-eh. Foughtn. Arret. Viplm. Ssettessiim. Uo-est-eh.”

“You will be taken by the Seeker, for suspicion of action against the Devine and the Conclave” the Commander said and nodded to two men with shackles who had followed in their wake.

“Uo-brish ta may-eh,” were her words at the sight of wood and chain. Her head to one side she added with a second glance to the Commander: “Below ech nol.”

 _Perhaps_ , Solas thinks the third time walking this memory, _the Commander had taken this as acceptance_. A generous estimation, for he has twice-over thought her simply ignored by human ignorance.

“Examination will begin immediately,” the Commander said. “Present your wrists.”

The humans waited.

So had she; she had done nothing, said nothing, but the humans had been too angry and impatient and fearful for this assumed show of defiance. The soldier on the left braved the last foot in a spacious bubble separating her from everyone else and reached for her arm with opened maniacal.

In the pause of one beat and the next, armor shifted into being covering her in leather and bone; a weapon dark of blade and edges jagged came into being as well. It is creation, will, magic. And even as the sword formed to rest in right hand as if it had been there all along, the fingers of her left hand twitched and the shackles fly towards her- then away and angled to crash on the far, far wall.

There is an outcry. “Knight-Enchanger!” was a yell, but “Mage!” echoed on many lips. A Smite came from the Commander- his was not the only one.

Solas knows the effect of a Templar’s Holy Smite, the thick miasma that clings to skin and burrows through pores to the magic in one’s veins. It had been described to him as a splintering deep within the soul that left its victim hollow, grasping. It is a taste of Tranquility, he has been assured by one who has the knowledge to compare, of separation to all that is magic and the fade. A single Templar leaves the mage unable to cast, stunned and stunted.

There had been nine Templars in the Temple of Sacred Ashes who attacked thus. The Commander and his army must have thought it would be easy, then, with a mage so handled.

The conjured armor remained, as did the sword. _She_ remained standing, unbroken and unbent. “Vik-ta basowin-day,” she had said, shrugged and fire danced brighter than the green in her left hand she held at the ready.

“You will submit - _now_ ¬- Mage!” Growled the Seeker, sword drawn.

“Archers ready!” Sounded from on high.

To be fair, the first strike of blade had been hers, as was the first blood drawn and the first life taken. What words she spoke next opened sky and shook the ground.

The last to fall was a fleeing archer, whose chain-mail tunic could not save her from an arrow let loose from a conjured bow.

And what of the elven woman, when those who would have named her scapegoat lay still with death? She turned bodies over with an armored foot and rifled through their pockets. Perfectly at home with the practicality of murdering those who would murder her.

He has watched this memory every night since the beginning. It has not changed, has not shifted, but in the slightest details of who died first and where. It is never the elven mage. It is always everybody else.

He will need to walk this memory once more before he tries to deal with her.


End file.
